Irony's Resistance to Theory
pragmatism in the text of deconstruction

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Notes

.I would like to thank my anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions which I have taken into consideration in my final revision of this article.

1. These conferences both published their proceedings as significant volumes. The American colloquium resulted in the 1995 publication of Deconstruction is/in America: A New Sense of the Political, edited by Anselm Haverkamp, for New York UP. And the French symposium produced the 1996 volume Deconstruction and Pragmatism, edited by Chantal Mouffe, for Routledge.

2. Rorty, “Philosophy without Principles” 132–38 (135).

3. Haverkamp, “Deconstruction is/as Neopragmatism” 4. While the concept of radical empiricism emerges in the work of the early pragmatist William James, we find Derrida describing his own project as a “radically empiricist” departure from the orbit of metaphysics. See, for instance, Derrida, Of Grammatology 162. On the radical empiricism informing de Man's project, see Gasché, “In-Difference to Philosophy” 259–94, esp. 292.

4. Critchley, “Deconstruction and Pragmatism” 19.

5. On the place of nonknowledge in deconstruction, see, for instance Derrida, Of Grammatology 162. See also Hamacher's remarks on the “docta ignorantia” of de Man's deconstructive work in “Lectio” 181–221 (195). On Rorty's neopragmatist rejection of epistemology, see, for instance, part III of his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and his more recent essay “The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature” 125–40.

6. Derrida, Memoires 14.

7. Ibid. 18.

8. Ibid. 14–17.

9. Derrida, “My Chances/Mes chances 27.

10. Derrida, “Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism” 77–88 (78). Cf. also Haverkamp, “Deconstruction is/as Neopragmatism” 1–13.

11. Cf., for instance, Bloom's “Emerson” 145–78.

12. Cf., for instance, Cavell's The Senses of Walden; In Quest of the Ordinary; This New Yet Unapproachable America; and Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome.

13. Cf. Rorty, “Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism” 139–59.

14. Cf. idem, “Philosophy as a Kind of Writing” 90–109.

15. Cf. idem, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity.

16. Cf., for instance, Lang, “The Limits of Irony” 571–88. See also in this regard Rapp, Fleeing the Universal.

17. Rorty, “De Man and the American Cultural Left” 129–42 (129).

18. De Man, “Excuses (Confessions)” 278–301 (301). See also idem, “The Concept of Irony” 163–84 (184).

19. Schlegel, Geschichte der europäischen Literatur 18: 410. Quoted in (and translated by) Albert, “Understanding Irony” 825–48.

20. Schlegel, Geschichte der europäischen Literatur 18: 85.

21. De Man, “The Concept of Irony” 178–79.

22. Idem, “The Rhetoric of Temporality” 212.

23. Ibid. 214.

24. Ibid. 214–15.

25. Idem, “Aesthetic Formalization” 263–90 (289, 267).

26. Idem, “The Rhetoric of Temporality” 219.

27. Cf., for instance, Gasché's review of de Man's Allegories of Reading, “ ‘Setzung’ and ‘Übersetzung’” 36–57.

28. De Man, “The Concept of Irony” 172–73.

29. Ibid. 182.

30. Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments 5.

31. Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment 90–91.

32. Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments 31–32.

33. Cf. Szondi, “Friedrich Schlegel and Romantic Irony” 57–74. See also Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, The Literary Absolute.

34. Newmark, “L’Absolu littéraire 905–30 (912).

35. Szondi, “Friedrich Schlegel and Romantic Irony” 65.

36. De Man, “The Concept of Irony” 182–83.

37. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, The Literary Absolute 42.

38. Emerson, “Circles” 171–75.

39. Thoreau, Walden 6.

40. Cavell, “Aversive Thinking” 57.

41. Poirier, Poetry and Pragmatism 3–4.

42. Cameron, Writing Nature 45.

43. Rorty, “Pragmatism and Romanticism” 105–19 (118).

44. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Falsity in the Extramoral Sense” 503–15.

45. Peirce, Collected Papers 6.194.

46. Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy 105–06.

47. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 12.

48. Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy 60–61.

49. Ibid. 71.

50. Rorty, “Private Irony and Liberal Hope” 79–95 (80).

51. Cf. ibid.

52. Rorty, “De Man and the American Cultural Left” 134.

53. Ronell, “The Rhetoric of Testing” 95–161 (110–11).

54. Ibid. 111.

55. De Man, “Excuses (Confessions)” ix.

56. Idem, “The Resistance to Theory” 3–20 (6).

57. Idem, “Return to Philology” 23.

58. Ibid. 24.

59. De Man, “The Resistance to Theory” 8.

60. Ibid. 19–20. Cf. also Newmark's excellent discussion of the relationship between irony and resistance to theory in “L’Absolu littéraire” esp. 910–11.

61. Gasché, “‘Setzung’ and ‘Übersetzung’” 44.

62. Ronell, “The Rhetoric of Testing” 111.

63. Gasché, “In-Difference to Philosophy” 287.

64. Cf. Rorty, “Deconstruction and Circumvention” 88; De Man, “Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant” 90.

65. On Rorty's shift from epistemology to hermeneutics, see Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 315–94. For de Man's argument in favor of poetics, see “Return to Philology” 21–26.

66. On the pathos of hope that informs Rorty's pragmatic recuperation of ironic nonknowledge, see, for instance, Rorty's “The Inspirational Value of Great Literature” 125–40. The pathos of madness that informs de Man's deconstructive recuperation of irony is evident throughout his work, from his discussion of Baudelaire in “The Rhetoric of Temporality” to his discussion of Schlegel in “The Concept of Irony.”

67. Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments 13.

68. Cf. Rorty, “From Ironist Theorist to Private Allusions” 122–37 (129).

69. Rapp, Fleeing the Universal 65.

70. See, for instance, Fabbri's discussion with Jean-Luc Nancy on this subject in “Philosophy as Chance” 212–13.

71. Derrida, “Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism” 81.

72. Derrida, Of Grammatology 61; idem, “Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism” 81.

73. Idem, “Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism” 81–82.

74. On Rorty's outspoken resistance to attributing to Derrida the status of a “quasi-transcendental” philosopher, see, for instance, his response to Gasché's The Tain of the Mirror in his article “Is Derrida a Transcendental Philosopher?” in Working Through Derrida, ed. Gary B. Madison (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1993) 137–46, and more importantly what he calls his “sequel” to this piece, “Is Derrida a Quasi-Transcendental Philosopher?,” Contemporary Literature 36.1 (1995): 173–200, written as a review of Geoffrey Bennington's Derridabase. See also Caputo, “On Not Circumventing the Quasi-Transcendental” 147–69.

75. Derrida and Ferraris, A Taste for the Secret 9–10.

76. Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments 5.